In medical imaging, one of the keys to a working environment that allows standardized, convenient and efficient working at different workstations is to provide a generic user interface that can display (or host) application program information from the various application programs irrespective of the application program currently in use. In this context, each application program is typically developed for one or more workflow runs within a branch of medical imaging, for instance magnetic resonance imaging or ultrasound imaging. It is often required here to use different application programs at one workstation in order to run through efficiently the different tasks of the daily workflows in medical imaging, for instance image acquisition or image postprocessing.
Typically, the users start the required application programs individually on a suitable computing device, and then switch to and fro manually between the various application programs with recourse to the properties and capabilities of an operating system of the computing device. Not only is this solution not user-friendly but it also encourages numerous mistakes. For instance, when switching over manually, the user can easily overlook a workflows step or, for example, when working in parallel with different instances of the various application programs, which are each associated with different patients, the user can also confuse the instances, resulting in a mixup between patients or patient data.
In order to provide better support to the user, there are systems that integrate the user interfaces of different application programs in one standardized user interface, what is known as a user interface (UI) container. Different applications are thereby able to use available input and/or output devices by elements being inserted into the user interface that can be used to bring to front the application programs currently required according to the workflow, or by these elements assigning to the different application programs respective display areas on a suitable display device in a predetermined manner. Even this improved approach, however, is not sufficient for providing user-friendly and efficient support for the various imaging workflows that a user runs through at a workstation in a day with different patients.
In other approaches, the application programs and the input and output devices are configured in a manufacturing process before delivery to a user. This accordingly involves assigning the appropriate devices, i.e. input and/or output devices, permanently to one or more application programs. It is possible to modify such an assignment or configuration in this case by adapting the user interface, although this must be performed by a trained person who knows what requirements are made of the relevant input and/or output devices by the respective application programs or applications, because not every application program can deliver the desired medical results using every delivered display device.